Petra Varl has been expressing herself primarily through drawing and graphic arts, although she’s been supplementing these with various other media, means of expression and manners of presentation of her artistic endeavor. It can be said that Petra Varl has tried out all the possibilities through which a dialogue with viewers can be established, be it through advertising panels, artists’ books, a web site or stickers, a wall painting or a photocopier reproduction, an artistic action or an intervention in public or private space. From her intimate stories and her views of life she’s developed iconographic images, simply drawn and playful in content. Her figures float timelessly on a spaceless plane. Her art practice is recognizable in the field of contemporary art in the way she redefines and re-actualizes her images with each project and attempts to place them into the context of whatever she’s facing.

In a 2013 text Barbara Borčič characterized “Hugs and Kisses: Nose to Nose and Mouth to Mouth” as the point of departure of the artist’s work in pop art and explained that there were many parallels between pop art and Petra Varl’s work (such as repetition, stylization, scenes and technical pop art processes of mass production, advertising strategies and design approaches) but she also emphasized that Varl’s work is effective in the sense of a general recognizability.

The artist always attempts to choose the most appropriate means of expression to help her realize her idea into a finished work of art, which she deems the most appropriate for the chosen exhibition venue. She prepares to work in a given gallery by making a paper model of the space, which serves her as a playground and contemplative safe heaven, where anything is possible. But as the author also seeks interaction with people and she extends her project beyond gallery space. She penetrates public space with her works to address a larger audience, which encounters Petra’s message (pictographic) signs or figures woven into cityscape on its daily coming and going.

The title of the exhibition in Krško is based on the figure Lovers that is the focus of the exhibition. It is a portrait of a man and a woman in the moment of a hug and kiss, which claims the entirety of the space. The figures are not drawn on the wall but are cut out of metal and painted black. Inclined onto the wall they directly project significance and with their 3.5 meter size they markedly fill the space. In the central part of the gallery, words that describe female and male qualities are arranged on the floor. The chosen words, such as pretty, friendly and courageous, for instance, are simple and sincere. They are short statements of a common experience of intimate moments, in which we are all equal, regardless of sex, skin color, religion or political views. These profane, small wishes are moments of recognition that despite our different views, which can divide us, we are alike in our primary wants. Simple words that dare to unite rather than to divide.
The words placed on the ground break the perceptual canon of reading on the wall, but this very fact allows the viewer to choose them herself. This is an intimate choice, a vehicle of sentiment. Words on the ground cannot be read as a text but are understood as fragments, as an associative reservoir from which to draw certain connections. Even though they are all present at once, in the face of the figure, they resonate according to the state we are in (as feeling viewers).

In the Gallery Krško the author does not merely maintain a primary dialogue with the viewer. Before The Lovers were placed in the gallery the artist populated the walls of various industrial sites in Krško with them and photographed them. At this point Petra Varl used some additional figures for her outdoor placements, which are part of her habitual imagery (i.e. the Smoker, the Bather, Father and Daughter) and that relate to other persons, objects or ways of life.  The cut-out figures found themselves in new situations and provoked inhabitual responses among the people. The industrial setting changed their charge of habitual museum artifacts. The same images in new situations were seen in different ways. Integrated in urban landscape they started functioning as graffiti.

The artist chose the cut-out technique because she wanted the figures to retain its form of a drawing but one that would not be limited by the edges of paper and would simply float in gallery space or gain a background when placed outdoors. The chosen technique allows her to tie her past with her current work and indicates her future intentions, as she continues to research new cut-out materials (wood). By entering her work into a room imbued with spiritual memory Petra Varl crosses into a phase of self-absorption. The exhibition indicates a transition from her extroverted work with numerous collaborators to a more introverted, contemplative approach.

Petra Varl places love onto the pedestal of the apsidal part of the exhibition space of Gallery Krško, playfully and full of humor, in her “drawing” style that is light, cheerful, humorous and full the author’s joie de vivre. As always in her work, she cajoles the viewers through the kissing and hugging lovers towards a much deeper contemplation. The kissing scene partially gets lost  in the contextualization with urban landscape as the quotidian moment of our being predominates. But the kissing and hugging scene of the lovers in the desacralized space of the former hospital church acquires a connotation of the sublime, in which Petra Varl’s simple drawing of a single line stroke masterfully contextualizes this specific artistic showroom with a contemporary iconographic narrative that silently suggests the purposefulness of our life.

Nina Sotelšek, text written for the exhibition Lovers, Galery Krško, 2016